TRAINING IN CROSS CULTURAL EXPERIMENTAL METHODS

An international interdisciplinary team will be visiting Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, JNU New Delhi from the 8th to 12th of August 2012, and will teach a unique master class on crosscultural experimental methods. Applications to participate are open now. What does the training involve?

Lectures on semantics, experimental methods and multivariate statistical analysis from from Dr Michael Dunn (linguistics), Dr Fiona Jordan (anthropology) and Dr Asifa Majid (psychology). Practical training in state of the art cross-cultural experimental methods. How to collect code and analyze primary data from native speakers. Demonstration of equipment used for data collection. The practical skills necessary to conduct your own cross-cultural empirical investigations. Experience with modern experimental and statistical techniques in semantics. A certicate from the Evolution of Semantic Systems consortium of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands.

What will you gain?

Who can participate? Students of linguistics, psychology, anthropology, or related disciplines, who speak one of the Indo-European languages of India. These include Assamese/Axomiya, Bangla, Maithili, Oriya, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali and Urdu. If you speak another Indo-European language and can collect data from 20 participants you can apply too. Students with access to non-scheduled languages (e.g. Rajasthani, Marwari, or one of the many smaller languages of India) are particularly welcome. Note that we are not collecting data from Dravidian (e.g. Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada), Munda (e.g. Santhali) or Tibeto-Burman (e.g. Bodo, Manipuri) languages at this time. If you dont know about the linguistic afiation of your language please contact the organisers. How to apply: Please send a short letter of interest (no more than one page) indicating which languages you are able to collect data from, your educational background, and your contact details to Dr Hari Madhab Ray <harimadhabray@gmail.com> before 10th of June 2012. For more information on our research, see http://www.mpi.nl/eoss or contact Dr Michael Dunn <michael.dunn@mpi.nl>.